1 Corinthians 1, verse 10.

And Paul says, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people

that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. And what I mean is this, is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. I don’t know if either, maybe you’ve been at a church picnic before, or some kind of festival, or summer camp, and there’s the old-fashioned but famous three-legged race. You ever done a three-legged race? I remember having done these before at camps and whatever. Church picnics. And obviously, the inside leg there is tied up with the other person’s, and you must be one with that person. And you figure out real quick, oh goodness, I’m not very good at being in sync with somebody else. It’s hard. It feels awkward. You want to rip away and run on your own, but you can’t, because you have to do it with them, and they’ve got their own mind about how fast they’re moving, and how much their legs are moving. And it’s very challenging. It’s very challenging to run, to walk, to go with people like that. And it’s very much so true in a spiritual sense. It’s very much so true for us as the church.

What Paul is writing to them about is this great division. This is the first of many issues, and I think this one is addressed first because it matters monumentally. It’s monumentally important. What does it matter if Paul talks to them about a whole slew of things if they’re never going to be united? If they’re never going to be united and all together hear what Paul has to say? So unity, oneness in the local church is monumentally important for Paul. At the same time, for these former pagans,

myriad of lives they lived, myriad of social statuses that they had, and the same for us today in the 21st century. It’s monumentally difficult to live in unity with the church. It’s like doing a spiritual three-legged race with people a lot. And it requires a lot to press in and live by the Spirit and really do what Paul’s writing to us about here, and that’s follow Jesus together. That’s what he’s really talking about here. And I know those aren’t foreign words to us. I say those a lot. We write them on things. It’s because I don’t want it to be a slogan. I say it so much because I really think it’s so much of New Testament Christian life is following Jesus together. So that’s what we’re looking at here.

In this section, Paul starts by saying, I appeal to you, brothers.

I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree there be no division among you, that you be united in the same mind, in the same judgment.

So an appeal is not just a request. It’s more of an urgency. It’s more of an urgent sort of begging. It’s almost, I’m appealing to you. I’m really pressing you on this. And Paul makes this really impassioned plea to them based on what he said, if you remember, a couple weeks ago, his introduction. And really the weight of that introduction matters as to whether or not this section can be taken serious, if it can hold water.

Paul says, I plea with you that you have the same mind, that you agree. And you have the same judgment. It’s like Paul’s saying, I want y’all to say the same thing is what the Greek can mean. And I want y’all to be so unified. It’s like you’re speaking with the exact same voice is what it means. As opposed to division. You’re divided in life. You’re divided in how you think. You’re divided in how you approach situations. And Paul’s not referring to petty arguments like they have these committees and one guy wants the walls yellow. One guy wants the wall blue. That’s not what we’re talking about here at all. He’s talking. He’s talking about the real meat of the Christian life. Those new lives that we’re supposed to have in Jesus. And we’ll get to it here in a little bit. The particular issue about what they’re divided.

But here, Paul stresses unity. He stresses just the overall importance of how important it is, how much it matters that they’re unified. It’s a motif. It’s a theme in the Old Testament. We’ve looked at the psalm before on Sundays. That psalm, Psalm 133. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It’s in the Old Testament. It’s a theme throughout the New Testament. It’s so often a theme in individual letters. Be united, Paul says.

You know, it’s interesting when we read that word united. One commentator reminds us that that word is a surgical, medical term. So when he’s saying be united, he’s saying you should be united as when a bone is put back in place where it’s supposed to be with the sinew and the joint. It’s supposed to be 100% intact. If you’ve ever maybe had something disjointed or you’ve ripped or torn a ligament, it doesn’t feel good, does it? Even when it’s getting better, it doesn’t feel good. Even when it’s almost completely healed, it’s still terribly uncomfortable because it’s designed as what? To be perfectly, perfectly in function with all the other parts of the body. So that’s the kind of intimate, deep, certainly supernatural unity that Paul’s appealing to here. And it’s really comprehensive, he says, in mind and judgment. So mind is not just what you’re thinking, but how you think about things, what you believe, your feelings on it, and judgment, how that’s going to come out in decisions that you make and how you live your life together. He’s saying I want you to be that surgically united in mind and judgment,

which really seems a thousand miles away because Paul says Chloe’s people, whoever Chloe is in her household, apparently reliable people, she says that there’s quarreling, quarreling among you. Now, again, this is where English and Greek, you know, they don’t line up and we have to look a little deeper. When I hear the word quarreling in the 21st century, I think about a couple of kids like fighting over who took the last piece of candy. You know, I think about just almost like a silly little like petty argument happening. That’s not at all what this word means. This word means bitter conflict. So she’s saying Chloe, people have told me that you guys are hot in each other’s throats. There’s something wrong with you. There’s some serious strife happening in the church in Corinth.

So what’s the basis, again, of how Paul can make this appeal?

Really, honestly, from a human perspective, it seems really ridiculous and foolish that Paul would make such an appeal, right? Because let’s be honest, whether it’s a family unit, relationships, secular organizations, political bodies, every group of entity of people you could think of has problems. People get hot at one another. People have disagreements. Relationships get ruined. Sometimes they don’t get repaired. So what is it that Paul is possibly going to say that could be an appeal for surgical unity among the people of God at Corinth?

And I think, honestly, if we’re gut level, you know, truthful about it, this is not something that I think the church has been good at for the last 2,000 years. Church split is a common phrase for a reason. Because it happens a lot, and a lot of times for reasons that it shouldn’t have happened. Yet he’s still willing to call them brothers. So here’s his appeal. His only appeal is verse 10. And what does he say? He says, I appeal to you, brothers, by what?

The name of Jesus.

That’s enough for Paul. That’s enough for the Corinthians. And we had better believe, friends, that’s enough for us as well. Just the name of Jesus.

So if we’re going to follow Jesus, together, it requires, one, that you and I are unified in Christ alone. We’ve got to be unified in Christ alone. It’s that name that Paul makes his appeal because it’s just that person who’s done what had to be done so that you and I could be unified. And not as amicable acquaintances, but as brothers. And whose name is that? It’s Jesus’ name. Who is it? But Jesus, whose name is above every name. It’s that name that belongs to that person who destroyed the power of sin that for all time and everywhere kept people divided, susceptible to hate, susceptible to division. God didn’t create people that way. He didn’t create us to be variants. He didn’t create man to go to war with man. He didn’t create relationships to fall apart. He didn’t create families to break down. He intended perfect unity in the way that we love.

Harmony, encouragement, support. So who is responsible for removing the hostility? Who has lived a harmonious life? Who has paid the price for all of our strife and hate between one another? Who’s died to our divisions and been raised to life new and pure? It’s only Jesus.

It’s only Jesus. So it’s only in the name of Jesus that you and I could have the love and care that the Father and the Son have. Between one another, for one another. It’s just Jesus. It’s only possible in Him. The name is a powerful name because the life is a powerful life.

Jesus’ name is powerful because Jesus’ life is powerful. You could say Chad all day long and you’re just going to wear your jaw out. But you say Jesus and heaven and earth surrender. You say Jesus, things change. People are healed. Lives are restored. Churches form. That’s what the name and power of Jesus does. All the goodwill, all the best intentions, all the diplomatic talk. Nothing can undo hate and bring unity and love and peace but the name of Jesus.

And it’s something that God intended. It’s something God planned before time began. That one day Christ would come and bring this kind of unity. Only He can. In Jeremiah 32. He prophesied. He says, I will give them one heart. How about that? They’ll have one heart. One way that they may fear me forever. So God was always intending on having a people so united by the life of His Son in the name of His Son, Jesus.

If that’s true, this is true. The breakdown of any relationship.

And there are breakdowns of relationships. And as I said, there’s breakdowns of churches. It always goes back to this. There’s a failure to uphold the truth and love of the gospel above everything. Division happens when one person ceases to care about another person and put themselves first.

Frustrations between people happen when my personal welfare goes before your personal welfare. I love self above everything else, right? But if we look at the gospel, what’s the gospel tells us? The gospel tells us. The gospel tells us that the truth of God governs the love of how of how we should relate to one another. And it’s the gospel that gives us the power to obey that truth in that love. And simply what I mean is the Ten Commandments. Don’t murder people. That’s a truth. But if I obeyed it, I would I would be loving those I didn’t murder. Right. Don’t sleep with people’s wives who aren’t, you know, if they’re not your wife, don’t sleep with women who aren’t your wife. That’s a truth. And that’s love. So so how is it then that I could know the truth, love that truth, obey that truth so that in living out those truths, I’m also loving people. It’s only by the power of the gospel breaking in and rearranging me and you on the inside that we find ourselves truly able to obey and love one another. That’s what the gospel does. It gives us back the joy we lost. It allows us to. Really have a certain gladness, life giving fellowship that God wants us to have. God wants us to glorify him because of our love for one another. But I want you to see on top of that, on top of the joy God wants you not to have in our relationships with one another. He does it for his own glory. Look at what Paul says in Romans 15. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice do what? Glorify God in the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. Why do this? Why do this? Paul says because it gets God glory. It gives God glory when we live in the harmony of Jesus together. Our fellowship points to what Jesus did. So when you and I are functioning as a church together and we’re considering one another before ourselves and we’re obeying God’s truths together. It’s this. Explosive picture of what God had always planned to do in Jesus and how it’s happening through the power of the Spirit. And that brings God glory.

Which is great, except for when we disobey that. Because if God unified all people in his son Jesus and you and I don’t want to live in harmony, guess what we’re doing? Defaming the glory of God. We’re resisting the Spirit’s intentions and desires and will to bring the Father glory through producing. Christ in our relationships.

Third, and I don’t want us to miss this third point, is when we live together in such harmony, it is a tool in the hand of God. It’s a tool that God wants to use.

John chapter 17, verse 20 in Jesus’ high priestly prayer.

He says, I do not ask for these only, meaning his disciples present, but also for all those who will believe in me through their words. That’s just everyone through. Church history. That they may what? Be one. Just as you, Father, and me, and I, and you.

That they also may be in us. Why? So that the world may believe that you have sent me. So as we enjoy Christian fellowship, as God’s getting glory through our fellowship, it’s supposed to look really foreign and really attractive to people. And they go, I’m on the outside and I want to be on the inside. There’s a display of the power of the gospel when it’s visible in the community. There’s a display of the unity of the local church. And really get a beautiful picture of that in Acts chapter 2. You know, I won’t reference it because it’s kind of a long passage. But just to paraphrase it, they’re devoting themselves to teaching. They’re devoting themselves to praying. They’re sharing everything. They’re living in such unity together. It says that God adds to their number day by day. Because people are going, this is a different looking kind of community. There’s a certain kind of oneness here. I’ve never seen or experienced anywhere else.

Friends, does the world need to hear the gospel to be saved? Absolutely. Paul says faith comes by hearing. But is it true that God expects Christ-centered community to accompany the gospel when people hear it? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you can’t read Jesus. You can’t read the New Testament and get away from that. That He wants people to see the power of the gospel at work in relationships as people are called to believe it with their hearts and with their minds and give their lives to Jesus.

Always quoted. For a good reason. What does Jesus say? A new command I give to you. What? That you love one another. And that’s how people, He said, will know that you’re mine. Is when they see your love.

Calvin says, Nothing is more inconsistent on the part of Christians than to be at variance among themselves. For it is the main article of our religion that we be in harmony among ourselves. And farther on such agreement, the safety of the church rests and is dependent.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an orchestra, you know, before, you know, seen a symphony.

They’re probably not as popular as they were in times past, but they are amazing in their own way because, you know, you’ve got, man, dozens and dozens of people up there and they’re each playing a very different instrument. You know, you got woodwinds, you got brass, you got strings, you got percussion going and they’re all very, very complex. You know, the music they’re playing and their instruments, they know them so well. They know them so well. They’re masterful musicians and yet they’re all playing under the conductor. He knows everybody’s parts. He knows where every single note is supposed to be played by every single musician up there. And as complex as it is, when it all comes together, it’s just this beautiful noise. And right, it just kind of captivates the audience. And I think that’s something like, in a small way, that’s something like the local church. When all of us are different persons, when we’re all surrendered to the Spirit, we’re in tune with one another, we’re in sync, we’re in harmony, and it’s just this beautiful overflow of the gospel to the world.

Christ-centered community, it’s not something that is optional. Living with Jesus as the center of our lives and we’re all standing around Him saying, Jesus, who are you? How do we be like you? How do we love one another like you? How do we live in this world like you? That’s not optional. You can’t do it alone. You can’t do it with a few people. We’re called to all do it together as the church. I think it means very much so that you and I have to go the distance to be unified with one another. It means you and I have to go the distance to humble ourselves, go the distance to make amends, go the distance to love people, go the distance to care for people in their need. You know, with COVID going on, I’m so encouraged by all of our ladies who, we’ve talked, have much better communication lines than men. They’re so in tune with what’s going on and bringing meals and grocery shopping. It seems maybe insignificant at the time, like, oh, you’re just grocery shopping, whatever. But it means so much when we live that way together and we’re loving one another and we’re working out our relationships together. It makes us effective and useful so that more and more can see the greatness of the gospel to the glory of God. That’s a powerful, evangelistic, tool. So, invite people to church. Because when they come to church, they see our fellowship. Invite your non-believing friends, maybe over on a weekend when other believing friends are there. Do what you’ve got to do to expose non-believers to the believing community. Because God says He will, not He might, He will and does and intend on using that to draw people to faith. We must be unified in Christ. Paul’s saying there. But go on verse 12 with me.

Paul says, What I mean is this. Each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? He says, I thank God that I baptize none of you except Crispus and Gaius so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. So, Paul does get specific. And he gets really specific. He gets really specific on an issue that I think plagues every century of the church. It’s always an issue. And the issue is rivalries and factions, kind of in general to say it. It’s preference over one leader, his way of doing things, to the demise of allegiance to Christ. So, if we’re going to be unified in Christ, we must also have allegiance only to Christ.

So, Paul playing to the Corinthian church. We read about that in Acts. We read in Acts 18 that Apollos went there when Paul left, and Apollos ministered. And apparently Peter was there at some time. Cephas was there ministering as well. But I want you to see something as we consider this, something that the Hebrew writer says in 13, 17. He says, So, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who have to give account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. So, right there and in many other places in the Scripture, you see really the command to honor leaders in your life, be thankful for leaders in your life, really praise God for them, that God’s putting people in your life to grow you up, to sharpen you, to correct you in the faith. Even people that aren’t in official offices in the church, we’re grateful for. I think about, Bunyan in his autobiography talks about these three, four poor ladies who were conversing on the street about Scriptures, and that was one of the big things God used to convict him, was just overhearing these poor ladies study the Bible together. So, I mean, there’s so many people, parents, teachers, friends, you know, whatever it is, Sunday school, where God uses these people in different ways to mightily impact us. And we should thank God for them. We should thank them for their faithfulness that was there. Paul himself, we’ll refer to himself as the spiritual father of the Corinthians in just a few chapters.

So, this isn’t the kind of thing Paul’s condemning here, just to be clear. I want to make that out. That’s not at all what he’s condemning. What Paul’s condemning is a kind of tribalism that stems from an allegiance to a certain leader, but that allegiance belongs to Christ alone. It’s taking away supremacy from Jesus. And I think we could speculate, well, what exactly was the issue? We would be speculating, because nobody really knows what the issue is. It had to do with an inappropriate preference for this leader or that. That’s what it had to do with, and their way of doing things. You know, folks, we should really do things the way Apollos did them. I like the way he taught. He just grabbed my attention a little better. You know, I liked his way of doing evangelism. I mean, he had some methods. He did some stuff Paul didn’t do. And I think Apollos, is the way to go. And someone else says, no, hold on now. The Apostle Paul, he’s the original gangster. He planted the Corinthian church. I mean, Paul got knocked off the donkey, Damascus Road. He saw Jesus. He saw, you know, Jesus in heaven. And, you know, Paul, the Apostle Paul is the guy, you know, that we’re going to be modeling our ministry. No, no, no, hold on now. Peter has been here. Remember, Peter walked with Jesus. So if anybody’s going to be like our exact template for ministry, it’s going to be Peter, man. He’s our guy. Let’s do it his way. And you see how quickly our petty human preferences start to cut us up and divide us, not related to issues that matter. That’s not what we’re talking about. If we were, it would be a different conversation, but we’re not. We’re talking about petty human preferences. And these fleshly impulses did two things. First thing it did was it ruined their fellowship.

They were now at war to see who was more Christian.

Who was more right. You know, who was more godly. Who got it a little bit better. And secondly, what they were doing by really forming cults is what they were attempting to do is they were defaming Jesus. They were giving mere men primacy that belonged to Jesus alone. So again, I want to say we should deeply desire to be led by godly men. We should deeply desire to profit from their ministries. But a man can only take you so far in the faith that he has gone. And here’s the reality. Even the Apostle Paul did not have a perfect faith. The Apostle Paul was a man with sin struggles like every other man. So at the end of the day, I can say thank you for their ministry. But the moment that that man tries to take a place in my heart that belongs to Jesus alone, that man must be cast aside entirely. And you know, it’s not something Paul would have disagreed with. Look in Galatians 1. Here’s what Paul says. And this is really powerful to speak into this conversation. He says, But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. So Paul says, If you’re getting something other than the gospel you’ve already received, I don’t care who it was. He says, I don’t care if it was me. Accursed? Curse me. Throw me out. Throw me out.

Just Jesus. Just Jesus is Paul’s plea for them. So he really asks these three. I think they’re on purpose. Plain and generic to kind of, you know, shame them into realizing how silly they are. He says, Is Christ divided? Is Christ divided?

Now they’re divided in their church right now. But no, Christ is what? He’s the head of the body of Christ. And the body, like we talked about, it will all be in surgical unity at the end of all things. And the power of the gospel is able and capable to keep us loving one another and to keep us faithful and looking like Jesus. The body of Christ cannot be severed. It cannot be severed from itself. He says, Was Paul crucified?

Of course Paul wasn’t crucified. It was Jesus who uniquely came to live, to suffer, to die, to carry the sins of the world, to be resurrected and give us new life. It was just Jesus that ascended to heaven as at the right hand of the Father. And then he says, Well, what about baptism? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?

Of course not. You were crucified, buried, and raised to new life. With who? With Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus alone is worthy of calling you to new life. And you know what’s interesting about this is it’s not the first time this has been talked about in the New Testament. Because if we go back to the beginning of the Gospels, you remember John the Baptist’s disciples come to John kind of peeved, like, Hey, John, everybody’s going to Jesus’s, you know, and they expect John to like, Well, you know, we got to do something, you know, and get our folks back, get the crowds back. That’s not what John says. What John says is really a perfect commentary on this section. In John 3.30, he says, He must increase, I must decrease.

What a banner to hang over every Christian life, to hang over every church, every ministry. The height of every successful ministry is nothing more than, Hey, I must decrease, Christ must increase. And if my ministry, if our lives are doing something besides that, something’s wrong. You and I are so prone, aren’t we, to make the Christian life about so many other things or people. As plain as it sounds, it’s all about Jesus. It’s all about Jesus.

Do we need to have good theology? Yes, we need to have good theology. Should you deeply care about truth? Yes. But, theology can often become a weapon to condescend people when they don’t believe just like you, and you’ve read the right authors, and you follow just the right people, and you just want people to know that they might be Christians, but I’m a little more Christian than them, you know. I know what a worship service should really look like. I know what the Christian life should really look like.

Hopefully, we’re dead on in what we’re trying to learn. It would be foolish to say, I don’t really care if I learn the right or wrong things. No, that’s not at all it. The danger lies in elevating the means, the teachers, the tribe, and yourself is better. Because what happens when that happens is you’re exalting yourself and your tribe, not Christ. Not Christ.

And verse 14 to 16, it’s comical to me. He says, I’m grateful. I didn’t baptize any more of you, you who’s, than Crispus and Gaius. Oh, maybe I baptized Stephanus’ family too. I don’t know. Because y’all are trying to put a crown on a king. But let me say something. The king’s already come and it’s Jesus.

Doesn’t mean we won’t be interested in good theology. Doesn’t mean we won’t, you know, care about faith and practice. Doesn’t mean that at all. It means if we really love Christ, our king, we’re going to seek truth and unity

and love in a way that Christ remains on the throne and only Him. And only Him. And we avoid frivolous divisions and discord.

You know, just to kind of paint a hypothetical, if someone comes and says, I don’t care for the exclusivity of Christ, exclusivity of Christ, you know, it’s not Jesus alone that can get to heaven. You can get to heaven many other ways besides Jesus. Okay, that’s first tier. And I have to part with you there because that matters. I can’t leave that behind. But someone else says, I really like gospel style worship music. I think that’s right. I think it’s right. I don’t like this other style. I don’t like this style. See, when we get really down into these petty issues that aren’t at the heart of the Christian faith and Jesus is saying, that is not at all what y’all should be breaking your fellowship over. So you have to really ask yourself the question, what hills do I want to die on in the Christian life? You really do. You need to learn. We need to learn how to disagree and love on issues that aren’t of paramount importance. Right? I think something else to think about in this conversation is limited time. Like your life is limited. My life is limited. I only have so much time to make a stink about so much. Like, are you sure that’s the thing that you want? Like, is that your thing that you want to die on? Really of all the things you could give your life to and argue about, it’s that thing. Right? So my encouragement to you is let’s do what Paul said and consider other people’s things. Let’s make people more significant than ourselves and stop living for second-tier tertiary issues. Doesn’t mean we don’t think and care deeply. Care deeply. Care deeply. Love deeply. Is my plea on that alone. If my appreciation for a man’s ministry, and I have men that I value, as I’m sure you do, if it’s Mount Everest, if it’s Mount Everest, Jesus is the galaxy in which that mountain is in. Right? Even multiple galaxies. Right? Right? That mountain I love tends to lead me from Christ. Okay, I’m going to level it. And I think that’s maybe just how we relate godly people to the God-man, Jesus Christ. Okay?

Verse 17. We’ll open up more of 17 in the next passage next week.

Paul says, Christ didn’t send me to baptize. He sent me to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom. Lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Paul could have created the cult of Paul. Peter could have done it. Apollos could have done it. They weren’t there to do that. They were there to make disciples of Jesus. They were there to teach the nations and baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That was the aim. Right? Because there really is no such thing as there’s following Jesus alone. There’s only really one way to follow Jesus for us, and that’s following Jesus together,

unified in Christ, our allegiance is to Christ alone. That’s the only way to be in Him. So let’s fight for unity. Let’s fight to let our unity be a witness. Fight to build one another up. Fight to live in the power of the gospel because in that, God gets all the glory. Amen? All right, let’s pray together. Lord, we thank You for our time this morning and Your Word. Thank You that we can just dwell on just the grace of Christian community. And Lord,

Lord, get to know and enjoy the gospel together and You’re using us in one another’s lives. So we just pray against every work of the enemy, every work of the world, of the flesh, to divide and separate us, Lord, that, Lord, we wouldn’t just survive, but we would thrive as a local body as we build one another up in Jesus, Lord. So we bless Your name. And again, we do lift up those who, Lord, are sick, those who are just being plagued right now by COVID. God, we pray healing. We pray, Lord, that You would see them, we pray You would be gracious, Lord, in all things. We pray that Your will will be done. We pray that in Christ’s name, amen.